The Miracle or the Hundred Acre Weed and Rock Sanctuary

I need to start with a disclaimer of sorts. Our five children not only survived my weird mothering style, but have all become basically good, reasonably happy, creative and productive people. This is the miracle. I dragged our family out of a comfortable suburban ghetto to live in the middle of nowhere, six miles down a dirt road from the nearest small town. We were the first outsiders to move into this particular back in the woods “holler” since before the civil war. It was a different world. After a couple of months, our first grader said to me, “You were right, Mom. We are going to learn a lot from living in the country. Before we rode the school bus out here we didn’t know any cuss words.”
When our preschooler and I spent days exploring the land collecting weeds and rocks for making nature crafts, we weren’t close to a bathroom. And frankly, I never really did very well with the whole toilet training thing anyway. So he just targeted the closest tree. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to teach him a protocol for trips to town where to my chagrin, he dealt creatively with the lack of trees by using car tires instead.
Another of our sons was by nature both incredibly kind and extremely private. For some reason this combination brought out my dark side. One Easter, I put money for each child in a large plastic egg and painted lovely flowers and scenes on them. For reasons known only to God, and maybe Satan, I cement glued this son’s egg together. I knew that of all our children, he would be the only one that wouldn’t destroy the art work to get the money, but he also wouldn’t let anyone know about his problem. Sure enough, there he was surreptitiously grappling with his egg as the others were happily counting their money. He finally quietly slipped away to his room, where fortunately he couldn’t hear his mother’s evil laugh. I finally did weaken and help him break the egg open while promising to paint him another one.
Siblings are going to fight. It’s a law of nature. Having been ten years older than my only sibling, I was not used to family infighting. It drives me over the edge. Our kids fought furiously every single morning. So as soon as they got old enough to pour milk on their cereal and get themselves dressed for school, I simply put the pillow over my head and slept until they left. One morning our oldest came in saying he was sick. Could he stay home? He still claims I was awake and said yes. That day, I was busy with a project and never got over to the kids’ side of the house. When I had finished my project by lunch, I began to regret that I had told him yesterday I wouldn’t be able come after school to take him to a friend’s house. So I called the school to ask them to tell him I would pick him up. I doubt if they ever believed he didn’t skip school, even though I tried to explain why I didn’t remember that my child was home sick.
I was an equal opportunity embarrassment for all my children. I variously humiliated: one by attending her elementary school’s Halloween Open House dressed as a witch, another child by gathering pine cones in his Junior High School yard while his classmates watched from the bus, and also the first musician in our family by running with tears of pride all the way down main street along-side his marching band. And I pretty much humiliated all of them by playing the senile fairy godmother when the local theater group put on a warped version of Cinderella at their schools. The list could go on.
Surprisingly, the only time they actually rebelled as a group was when I put our garden near the faucet right outside our sliding glass doors. In spite of my pressing all my children into forced labor, previous attempts at gardens had failed due to droughts and lack of accessible water. I now read that I could get a tremendous yield from a very small garden by making an environmentally friendly fertilizer using horse manure soaked in buckets of water. Unfortunately, our house was cooled by attic fans and lots of open sliding glass doors. Once spread, the manure tea was horrifically pungent. We had to choose between everyone gagging for days or dripping with sweat from closed doors. My lynch mob family threatened to either set fire to the land or run away from home en masse if I ever attempted another garden. My fantasy of a bountiful farm had to be traded for the creative possibilities of a weed and rock sanctuary.

Growing up, I always thought my mother was unlike other mothers. She was goofy and always told us stories complete with gestures and facial expression. Now that she’s bedridden and can hardly speak, I really miss her goofiness. I’m sure your children remember the times you “embarrassed” them with fondness. 🙂

My shy teen-aged daughter hated that i struck up friendships in the grocery line. years later she apologized saying she realizes how much my friendliness means to others

we are all born so different it takes a long time to understand, never the less value, other peoples’ ways of being in the world. My mother died by inches with Alzheimer’s…..but her quick humor would surface even after almost a year of not speaking…must come from a different part of the brain. we too were very different…..but sometime when i have an insight into her way of being in the world, I apologize to her spirit and feel a comforting sense that she too has now transcended the limits of her human personality…..and understanding is mutual.